Pawnee Campground –Brainard Lake

Another weekend of camping! This brings me to a total of 50 nights spent in my trailer this year so far…and I have at least four more weeks of activities planned between now and October.

The Bride and I left home of Friday morning at about 9 am and headed for Pawnee Campground to meet the rest of The Circle….Too Tall-Two Timing, K., Guitar and Pic-E. This campground is about an hour and a half drive from home and is at about 10,300 feet in elevation. With all the adventures I’ve had so far this year, this is the first time this season that I’ve camped this high and we picked the perfect time to do it! While The Circle camped in 70 degree weather, the Denver area sweltered in 100 degree temps!

It was an adventure to start with. The campsite I chose was listed as a 40 foot back-in site. Plenty of room for both my trailer and truck….if you could get into it! What the description didn’t say was that the access road was a very narrow rough dirt road with ditches on both sides and the area was heavily forested. To make a long story short, it took me about an hour to get the trailer into the site and once I was in, I was wedged between two trees both less than two feet from either side of the trailer.

In the picture above you can see the tree close to the door side of the trailer. I had to climb on the trailer roof and cut some of the branches off of the tree to keep it from damaging the roof.

After that adventure I was ready to chill for the rest of the weekend and we did just that. We had two days of pleasant weather, good food and good friends. The campground itself was peaceful but the surrounding area was crawling with folks from the front range getting away from the heat. It was so crowded that the park rangers were limiting the number of people coming in and when we left on Sunday morning we saw them allowing one vehicle in for every vehicle coming out.

It was stunning scenery but there were probably as many people on the trails as at the mall here in town. A little too “peoplefied” for my tastes.

I now have a break of about two weeks with no out of town adventures and then I’m off to Twin Lakes, CO for a Passport In Time project. This project will be an archaeological survey looking for prehistoric Indian sites east of the Arkansas River. There have been numerous reports of tepee rings, lithic scatters and other evidence of prehistoric occupation but the Forest Service has never done an official survey of the area. It will be fun and an adventure!

The week after that I’m off to Wyoming for another PIT, this time using a metal detector to find evidence of the Cherokee Trail. And the week after that I’m back close to home at Guanella Pass doing another archaeological survey with the Forest Service.

I have applied for three more Passport In Time projects in September and October that I have not heard anything about yet….and The Bride and I will spend a week camping in the Black Hills of South Dakota in September so the adventures definitely will continue.

Thanks for visiting.

The Adventures Continue

It’s been a while since my last post but that doesn’t mean that “his-self” has been bored or lonely. One of the reasons for the lack of posting is that I’ve just been having too much fun to sit down at the computer. This post is being typed in my trailer which is parked in Lathrop State Park in Walsenburg, CO….but more about that later.

Last weekend we three couples of The Circle had a 4th of July camping outing at Mueller State Park just to the west of Colorado Springs and on the north side of Pikes Peak. The Circle socializes a lot while we are in the Denver area but because of our diverse schedules, we don’t get to camp out together all that much so this weekend was a treat. It was a great weekend with liberal amounts of sightseeing, relaxing, group dining, laughter and fun. To add to the fun, Jamie and Betsy (part of Guitar’s extended family) joined us.

On Saturday we took a tour of the mining gold camps in the area. The picture at the top of this post was taken in the historic mining town of Victor, CO…birthplace of Lowell Thomas. For all you whippersnappers out there, Lowell Thomas was a very famous news reporter in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Victor is also the home of some of the most famous gold mines in the United States. The Independence, the Cresson, the Gold Coin and pictured just to the left of the American flag above, the Portland. At it’s peak in about 1902 Victor had a population of about 17,500. Today the population is about 400 and it looks more like a ghost town than lively bustling mining town.

There is one active mine left in town and it is just over the hill from the Portland Mine in the picture above. The Portland represents the old hard rock mining of the past. The new mining is open pit mining and while I understand the necessity of this approach to mining it sure is a shame to see what happens to a mountain when gold is mined in this way.

To give you an idea of the scale of this type of mining look at the picture on the right. The dot that the black arrow is pointing to is a pickup truck!

The weather for our outing was just perfect with the exception of one night when all hell broke loose. We had just finished dinner outside at the picnic table when and evening shower commenced. The shower rapidly got ugly and it rained, hailed, thundered and lightninged, blew and every other thing for about two hours. At one point we had about an inch of hail on the ground and my trailer awning nearly collapsed. Since the entire group was eating outside my trailer we all rode out the storm in my trailer….all eight adults and five dogs! It was a might cramped but we all had fun as you can see by the picture to the left.

On Monday morning we had our traditional group breakfast…with Mimosas, before breaking up and returning home.

Now about my current location. I left the Denver area this morning (Friday, 7/9) and headed south to the little town of  Walsenburg. Tomorrow morning I’ll be meeting up with a number of people who are all members of the Pike’s Peak Adventure League (I’m a member too.) This is a metal detecting club based in Colorado Springs. About once a month during the good weather months they have an outing. Tomorrow we will be going to metal detect at an old coal camp site that is located on private land. This area of Colorado had numerous coal camps to supply fuel for the railroads and other industry from the 1890’s until the 1930’s and later. This will be my first outing with the group so I’m not sure what to expect, but it should be interesting. The person who set up the outing informed us that we would be in rattlesnake country so I have come with snake gaiters for my legs and I’ll be carrying a  .38 caliber pistol loaded with snake shot! Hopefully my next report will tell you about all the cool artifacts we dug up…and the lack of snake activity so stay tuned.

I’ve also been selected for two more Forest Service Passport In Time adventures which I’ll tell you more about after I get home next week.

Thanks for visiting.

Gold Mountain Mine PIT

I left Hudson-Meng early Sunday morning. The weather was fantastic and the dirt road had dried up in the four days I was camped at the site. It was about 150 miles to Hill City and I just enjoyed the drive and looking at the incredible prairie scenery. My route took me over much of the same road I had travelled for the field trip on Tuesday but I didn’t mind at all. It’s large country and the second look was as enjoyable as the first.

Once I got beyond Hot Springs, SD I was in the Black Hills and the scenery changed from sparse prairie to rolling pine covered hills. The temperature was about 65 degrees and the air was full of pine scent. My soul smiled as I drove, life is very good.

I reached Hill City right about noon and after a few wrong turns, found the RV park that was to be my reprovisioning stop. It was nothing fancy at all, about 15 gravel sites with grass between them and right on the main highway. It really didn’t matter because I was busy with dumping my waste tanks, taking on fresh water, grocery shopping and doing laundry. It fit the bill for what I needed for the night. I also was able to use my cell phone to check in with The Bride. I hadn’t talked with her for about five days. 

After doing the laundry I drove out to the designated camp site for this project in the truck. Well before I reached the camp site I realized that my rig was just too big for that place. It was a very narrow rough dirt road with lots of low hanging tree branches. When I got to the camp site there were only a few people camping there and most were in tents. There was one truck camper and one small trailer. The people at the site said that the road had been closed for several days because of rain and a lot of the other volunteers had found better boondocking places in the general area so I decided to do likewise and it didn’t take long to find an nice meadow next to a little stream about a mile from the mine itself. I figured that if I left the RV camp early Monday morning I could set the trailer up and be at the job site by 8 am which I did.

I think I had more fun on this project that just about any other PIT project that I have done. There were about 20 people working on the restoration. In addition to PIT volunteers there were six or seven Forest Service personnel and several members of the Black Hills Historical Society. On our first day of work the project leader asked for volunteers who weren’t afraid of heights to work up on the roof and I volunteered. Much of my working career had me on industrial construction sites so heights and climbing ladders is not an issue for me.

For the rest of the week I worked with three other volunteers replacing rotted roof rafters and then sheathing the roof. To get to the rafters we used a large crane with a basket…that’s me in the basket in the picture above. It was physically demanding work but a whole lot of fun and we could really see the results of our labor. Unfortunately we did not get the entire roof sheathed but what we did do will help protect the building until the project restarts next year.

I was pretty worn out at the end of the day and my body is covered with black and blue marks, cuts and scrapes but it was very much worth it. I was in bed and asleep every day, well before dark and slept wonderfully except for two nights. On those nights I was having a running battle with several mice that somehow got into the trailer. I woke up one night and heard a “scurrying” noise that at first I thought was coming from the roof of the trailer. After listening for a while I discovered it was coming from inside the trailer and when I got up to investigate I saw the tell tale signs…mouse droppings. That afternoon I went in to Hill City and got some traps and mouse poison.

The following night I heard the scurrying again and got up to investigate. One mouse had gotten into the trash can and was having a feast in the bottom of the can. I grabbed the garbage bag out of the can and tossed it out the door. One mouse down. At first I thought that might be the only mouse but when I got back into bed I heard more scurrying and then shortly the snap of the mouse trap…two mice down. I think that was the last of them but to be sure I’ve left several baited traps in the trailer, just in case.

The project wrapped up for the year on Friday afternoon and I moved the trailer to the Rafter J Bar Ranch RV Resort where I met up with K and Too Tall-Two Timing who were spending several days there and taking in the local sights. Friday afternoon we drove over to Mt. Rushmore and then had a great dinner, graciously provided by K and Too Tall.

Saturday morning it was time to head home and I was on the road by 8 am. The trip home was uneventful but the traffic on I-25 from the Wyoming state line to the Denver area was pretty heavy. I’ll have the rest of the week to recuperate and reprovision the trailer.

On Friday, The Circle is having a Circle The Wagons long weekend outing at Mueller State Park. This is a great park just a few miles from the historic town of Cripple Creek and is a very popular place. To get camp sites for the July 4th weekend we had to make reservations in January. It should be a fun time so check back for the report.

Thanks for visiting.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It’s Tuesday (6/15) morning and I’m seeing the sun for the first time since I left Denver on Sunday morning. I’m camped at Ft. Robinson State Park just outside Crawford, NE. The drive up on Sunday was tiring to say the least. The first 100 miles was on Interstate 25 to Cheyenne, WY. That part wasn’t too bad but splash back by passing cars meant I had to “drive” the whole way. There was no opportunity to  relax and enjoy the scenery.

Once off I-25 it was a series of increasingly smaller highways and unfortunately the further north and east I got, the harder the rain came down. I made it to Ft. Robinson at about 3pm and I was more than ready to stop. The camping gods didn’t give me a break by slowing down the rain after I arrived so I got pretty soaked while unhooking the trailer. On the drive up here I kept remembering the description of the route into the Hudson-Meng PIT site. “Narrow dirt road that can become treacherous or impassible in wet weather”. This might prove to be interesting!

Yesterday the weather was a bit better…it wasn’t pouring, but it was still drizzling off and on. I decided to drive into Hudson-Meng site in the truck to see what the road was like. It’s about 4 miles from the campground to the dirt road and then it’s about 14 miles of dirt road.

When I hit the first portion of the dirt road I thought that it wasn’t going to be a problem. It was a county road, well graded and maintained and a semi-gravel surface. After about 4 or 5 miles of that, I hit a Forest Service road and things got ugly quick. The road was not built up above the surrounding area and consequently had very poor drainage. It also had no gravel surfacing and there was a fair amount of clay in the soil. All of that resulted in a gooey, slimy, slippery mess. I had the truck in four wheel drive and I was still slipping and sliding. A couple of times I almost gave up and turned around but I pressed on and in about another four miles the road got better. The rest of the way into the site was decent, not great but passable.

When I first arrived at the site I didn’t see any sign of human activity except for two cars parked in the parking lot. I thought that maybe the project had been cancelled and they forgot to tell me. I walked towards the two cars and as I did I came to the crest of a small hill and then saw 8 or 10 small tents, a small Casita trailer and two field tents.

I found the project leader hunkered down in one of the field tents. He said that they hadn’t gotten a whole lot accomplished because of the rain but were hoping that the weather would improve this week. He said there were about 18 people working as volunteers on the project and most were archaeology students from Minnesota. He also said that Tuesday (today) was a day he planned for a field trip to some local sites.

After some discussion I decided that I would stay at Ft. Robinson for at least two more nights in the hopes that weather would improve and the roads would dry out. I will meet the group in Crawford in about an hour and go with them on the field trip. Tomorrow morning I’ll drive into the site for the day. If the roads are dry enough to allow my 12,000 lb trailer to pass over them, I’ll drive it in on Thursday morning. More to come.

Thanks for visiting.

Two Week Road Trip

I will be headed out first thing Sunday morning for two weeks of travel and adventure. I’m headed first to the Hudson-Meng Archaeological Site in the Nebraska National Forest. This site is about 20 miles north of Crawford, Nebraska. My plan is to drive from the Denver area up through Cheyenne, Torrington and Van Tassel, WY and then head east on US 20 to Fort Robinson State Park where I’ll spend the night. Monday morning I’ll tour the historical park and then head for the Passport In Time project. The site is relatively remote so I don’t think I’ll be able to post any updates until at least Sunday 6/20 when I’ll head out. Right now the weather forecast is pretty good for that area with temps in the high 70’s at a max. That is great because this project involves excavation and that’s just like you see on TV, a lot of kneeling and brushing away minute amounts of dirt to reveal bison bones or stone age tools.

On Sunday I’ll drive from the project north along US 385 to Hill City, SD and spend the night at a commercial RV park so I can dump my waste tanks and take on fresh water before going to the next PIT project which will be about 15 miles from my overnight stay in Hill City in the lovely Black Hills National Forest. This project is also pretty remote and there will be no internet connection and most likely not even any cell phone reception.

When I complete this project on Friday afternoon, I’ll get to meet up with Too Tall – Two Timing and his bride K who will be staying at an RV Resort just south of Hill City. They will be in the area for about a week taking in all the sights and there are a ton of things to do and see in the area. Check it out here. We should have a great mini Circle The Wagons night and once again I’ll get the opportunity to dump my waste tanks and take a nice long shower!

I brought the trailer home yesterday and began cleaning and loading it for the trip. While shuttling between the house and the trailer I heard the low powerful roar of a piston airplane engine. Looking up I saw a vintage B17G Flying Fortress fly right over the house. This plane visits the Denver area at least once a year and is available for ground tours and if you want to fork over about $400 you can take a 15-20 flight in it. I kept an eye out all the rest of the day hoping I would see it again and get a picture of it but only spotted it one more time at a distance. I’ll bet today, being a Friday, I’ll see it more.

This will most likely be my last post for about a week, but stay tuned….adventure ahead!

Thanks for visiting.

John Martin State Park & Plover Patrol (5/19/2010)

I left the Denver metro area Tuesday morning and headed for southeast Colorado. John Martin State Park to be exact. The park is about 20 miles east of Las Animas, CO and what that means is that I don’t have a whole lot further to drive to get to Kansas, if I want to.

I arrived in early afternoon and was told that I could take the Camp Host site which is nice because it’s the only site with both electric and water in the entire campground. The Host has not taken up residence yet for the summer season. The campground sits right below the dam for the reservoir and it’s an eerie feeling to look up from a camping spot and realize that there is almost 100 feet of water just on the other side of that wall…over your head.

More eerie things happened as the evening approached. First the wind started absolutely ripping through the campground. My trailer was really rockin & rollin! At about 6:30 pm one of the park rangers came by and said that there was a storm 20 miles to the west with a potential tornado in it and everyone in the campground needed to go to the restroom/shower building for safety. For the next two hours the few campers in the campground stood around the restrooms looking at the sky and listening to the park ranger’s radio. Luck was with us as we got wind but nothing else. We could see that about a half mile north of the campground they were getting rain/hail/lightning but fortunately the tornado did not appear. The wind continued until after 9 pm before it finally quieted down for the evening.

At about 5 am this morning the wind started again and it rained…..poured, for about four hours. My Plover Patrol was not starting out very well! At about 10 am the local Division of Wildlife biologist showed up at my trailer and without much ado we headed out to survey the Plover Nesting sites.


Before I go any further I need to clarify exactly which Plover I’ll be patrolling this week. In previous posts I have called it the Mountain Plover…Wrong. On arriving here I was informed that the bird of interest is the Piping Plover. This bird is classified in The Sibley Field Guide to Birds as “rare” and listed by both the Federal Government and Colorado as “Threatened”.

As we drove to the first site, the biologist told me that there are only 12 confirmed Piping Plovers in Colorado. The total US population of this species is only about 2500 birds.  All of the Colorado Piping Plovers are right here in this small area of the state. Of the twelve that are known to be in Colorado, I saw six this morning in between rain showers. I wasn’t able to get a picture of one of them this morning because of the weather but hopefully sometime in the next couple of days I’ll get a good picture to post.

All of the nesting sites have been cordoned off by the biologist but “fun seekers” plying the waters of the reservoir have been disregarding the signs and ropes and have picnicked and camped in these areas. My job over the next few days will be to visit these sites several times a day. If I see any human activity I’m supposed to contact the local DOW enforcement officer by phone and not approach or even speak to the people violating the restricted area. In between my visit times I’m free to do whatever I want and I have a list of some local places I’d like to visit so hopefully there’s more adventure to come.

Thanks for visiting.

Old Spanish Trail PIT – Part 2

It’s Friday evening and  the Old Spanish Trail project ended at about 3pm this afternoon. For the three days since my last report we have been tramping around sage brush plains and Ponderosa Pine forests searching for any evidence of the Old Spanish Trail. This particular piece of the trail was used between 1694 and the mid 1800’s but it’s exact location is yet unknown. Oh, we have a pretty good idea of the general area but the specific piece of ground that served as the historic “Interstate” remains elusive.

Three days and we probably searched about 4 square miles. We had no problem finding evidence of 100+ year old logging operations and even older railroad crews cutting trees for railroad ties. The area is also littered with prehistoric Native American rock tools, arrowheads and flakes but evidence of human activities in the 1694-1860 time frame were almost non-existent. I say “almost” because today, the last day of the project, we had the find of the week. One of the group located a Spanish spur rowel. The rowel is the round thing at the back of the spur and the design of this piece is relatively easy to place and sometimes date. The rowel that we found today is definitely a Spanish design and it is hand forged so it’s pretty old. How old exactly can’t be determined without some laboratory work.

The other artifact we found that possibly is of the target time period is a piece of a metal arrowhead. Originally the Native Americans made stone arrowheads. After contact with the Europeans, the Native Americans obtained metal and made metal arrowheads. Later still, they acquired firearms but the metal arrowheads were used from the 1700’s to the mid 1800’s. Take a good look at the picture above. Now consider that 20 people searched about 4 square miles and found these two pretty small artifacts buried in the ground…Amazing!

We worked hard but the sheer beauty of the country made the trekking and digging and wind very worth while. Did I say wind? Yesterday the wind blew HARD. Hard enough to knock you off balance if you weren’t paying attention. The weather shamans said that there were gusts of up to 50 mph and this time I believe them. The Ponderosa Pine forest helped dent the wind somewhat and some of the time it was warm enough that I stripped down to a T-shirt. The wind could not dull the smell of the sagebrush. The wind could not lessen the beauty of the blossoming Pasque flower. In short, the wind was a minor inconvenience in an incredibly beautiful place.

Metal detecting is hard work. It’s more intense than just walking and looking at the ground. You swing the detector left and right while walking and listening for the magical beep that means you need to get on your knees and start digging.. Swinging takes energy and muscle power that  I don’t/didn’t have to last the whole day. I kept it up however, and after six hours of swinging I had a pretty sore arm, (note to self: need to exercise arms more!) but the experience of holding an artifact in your hand that a person, a human, held in his or her hands 100 years or more ago in the same exact spot is …is…I don’t know how to describe it. It’s almost religious.

OK, getting too deep here. It was a wonderful week. I had the opportunity to explore an area of the country that I had never seen before. I was able to meet a lot of great people including a teacher from Australia, a retired Naval aviator, a policeman from California and a lot of other retired folks like myself. We didn’t find positive proof of the trail we were searching for, but we helped the Forest Service narrow the search somewhat. I’m hoping that the Forest Service will repeat this project next year because I really think we were close to finding that positive proof. If they do repeat the project you can bet that my name will be on the application list.

Here’s some more pics of the trip……

 

 

I’m home for a week then it’s off to John Martin Reservoir to work with the Colorado Division of Wildlife but more on that later….

Thanks for visiting.

Don’t Know Why There’s No Sun Up In The Sky…

“Stormy Weather” is the title of the song that uses the post title for it’s first line. Originally written in 1933 and performed by the great Ethel Waters, it’s been covered by a gazillion of singers since. Here’s a particularly good rendition by Lena Horne in 1943…Despite the title it’s really a love song that uses weather as a metaphor.

The song and lyrics stick in my mind for an interesting reason. In the early 1980’s I had a routine outpatient bit of surgery done under minimal local anesthesia. It was so minimal that I experienced a bit of discomfort. To help overcome the discomfort I concentrated on the music that was being piped into the doctor’s office. You got it, Stormy Weather! Since that experience, whenever I’m trying to divert my attention from something unpleasant I think of, hum or sing the song. I’m thinking of the song now but the unpleasantness I’m diverting my attention from is…..stormy weather, not love.

Springtime in the Rockies has messed up my weekend adventure! The DOW project I was supposed to attend with The Bride this weekend was cancelled yesterday due to potential wet weather. The Bride and I decided that if the weather weren’t too bad we would go to Trinidad anyway and explore the town. Yesterday afternoon the system moved in with some pretty severe thunder storms. It would rain, thunder and lightning for a half hour or so, then clear up for an hour or so, then storm again. This morning we had some snow and heavy rain and the forecast had changed to the system not moving on until tomorrow afternoon and the mountains are expected to get 14”-28” of snow. Need I say more? The trip has been cancelled altogether.

My weekend was not messed up near as much as the weekend for Too Tall-Two Timing and K. See the comment about “thunder and lightning” above? Well the lightning part struck Too Tall and K’s house and caught the roof on fire. K was in the basement at the time. Too Tall is out of town on business. The Fire Department responded and put the fire out but not before an undetermined amount of damage was done to the roof and top floor of the house. There are at least three big holes in the roof…see my comment about heavy rain this morning.

The good news is that The Circle is here to help them as needed. Two Tall-Two Timing will be back in town today and the insurance adjusters will assess the damage today as well.

“Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky………”

Thanks for visiting.

Chatfield Camping & Bosque del Oso

Our Circle The Wagons campout with The Circle was a success. Nothing spectacular but a low key fun time. We all arrived Friday afternoon and after setting up camp, (see photo above) we all got together for libations and a grilled dinner.
Since I have not had the chance to use the grill that came with my trailer, I volunteered my grill as the official cooker. I must say that I wasn’t very impressed and am thinking that I may just go back to my portable Coleman grill for future trips. I do like the fact that the trailer grill taps into the onboard propane supply so I don’t have to worry about bringing…or keeping up with a separate fuel supply but overall it was a pain to set up and I don’t think it cooked very evenly.
The highlight of the weekend, as far as I was concerned, was the Saturday afternoon/evening festivities. As I mentioned in a previous post, The Bride had already volunteered our trailer for the gathering spot since it was the biggest. She also volunteered to be the dinner hostess and provide the main course…made from scratch lasagna.
To get us all in the mood for Italian food we watched the movie, The Big Night before dinner. It’s a great movie that revolves around one terrific made from scratch, authentic as it comes, Italian dinner.
After watching the movie I think our guests had pretty high expectations for dinner and they weren’t disappointed. Maybe it wasn’t as fancy as the dinner in the movie but everyone enjoyed it. 
Sunday was a lazy morning and we got together late for a group brunch before we tore down camp and headed home. This will be our last Circle The Wagons trip for a little over a month. In July we have already planned two events in the mountains. More on that later.
The Bride and I are feverishly trying to empty cabinets in preparation for the contractor to start installing granite countertops and a new backsplash in our kitchen.
I say feverishly because on Friday we’re headed to Trinidad Lake State Park, just west of Trinidad, CO and about 200 miles from here. That will be our base while we do volunteer work for the Colorado Division of Wildlife at the Bosque del Oso Wildlife Area. We will return late Sunday afternoon and finish up preparations for the contractor then.
It should take the contractor about a week to do all the work and him done or not, I head out for a Forest Service gig a week from this Sunday. Busy, busy, busy….but more on that later too.
Thanks for visiting.

Same Ole Same Ole

So we got 12-15” of snow early in the week and then we had two days of nice weather (high 50’s). Time for another storm! This one is not supposed to be as bad but the weather shamans are saying I may be looking at 5-10” on the ground by tomorrow morning. I hope they’re wrong this time because I haven’t gotten the parts for my snow blower yet and anything that ends up in the driveway will have to be dealt with manually.

While I don’t really mind the winters here or the snow, this time of year it’s hard because of the teasing that Mother Nature does. It would be one thing if it were just crappy weather all month long but the Spring weather that is wedged between the frequent storms gets my hopes up that it will be an early end to the snow and it will be RV season again.

Hopefully, this storm will be the last of any consequence because The Circle is planning on a Circle The Wagons camping trip in three weeks. This will be a local camp out at Chatfield State Park which is only a couple of miles from here…..about 8 miles to be exact.

The picture at the top of the post is a shot from the roof of my trailer “Bivouac”. It not only shows some of the snow left from the last storm but It shows the new wiring job on my solar panel. The original wiring was located under the panel and went through the roof and towards the back of the trailer. This new wiring goes to the front of the trailer and down the plumbing vent stack in the middle front of the roof.

The picture to the right shows the new Tristar TS45 Solar Controller installed in the basement storage area. The battery compartment is behind the wall to the left of the controller and the red “knob” on the left of the picture is a Perko battery cutoff switch that allows me to shut off or disconnect the batteries when the trailer is stored. That prevents the batteries from being completely discharged by things like the fire and CO2 alarms that cannot be turned off inside the trailer. 

Finally the picture to the left shows the remote meter that is installed inside the trailer. This digital display tells me all sorts of information about the charge state of the batteries, how much charge the solar panel is providing to the batteries and how much electricity is being used by all the electric things inside the trailer. It will also track this information over time. Cool stuff!

I expect that to be able to boondock for extended periods I’ll need at least one more solar panel but before I spend the money for that I will spend some time testing out the one panel system. The good news is that there is plenty of room on the roof for several more panels and it’s simple to add panels to the base system I now have.

Thanks for visiting.

A Typical March In Colorado

It was in the 70’s two days ago and even yesterday morning was pleasant. Yesterday afternoon however a storm blew in and for much of the evening it was blizzard conditions here. By the time it all ended at mid day today we had 10-15” of wet, heavy snow on the ground.

How do I know it was “heavy”? Well about 3/4 of the way through snow blowing the driveway the snow blower quit. Not the motor but the wheels and the auger. Seems as if there is a little  $0.50 plastic piece that keeps the control cables for the wheel drive and auger in the exact spot it needs to be to have the proper tension to work…..that broke.

That unfortunate breakage meant that I had to do the rest of the job manually. I haven’t done that in a while and the last time I did do it, the snow was our standard Colorado champagne powder which is exceedingly light and easy to move…if it’s not 3 feet deep.

My normal thorough and neat job….wasn’t today. I did the bare minimum to get by and I still think I’ll be a little sore tomorrow morning.

Now back to the snow blower. I pulled out the parts diagram and called Sears to see about ordering a replacement. The good news is that I can. The bad news is I can’t just get the $0.50 part but have to buy $30.00 worth of other parts to get that tiny little plastic part! While I’m pretty peeved about that there was no doubt in my mind that I would spend that much if I had to to get the snow blower back in operation. Before I called the parts center I checked all the miscellaneous junk I have in the basement trying to figure a way to jerry rig a fix and to my disappointment could not come up with a plan. So Sears has now got my $30.

The roads were so bad around here this morning that I decided to drive The Emmer to work. I’m glad I did because it was pretty slick at 5:30 am. Heavy wet snow is a different driving experience than champagne powder and The Emmer doesn’t have experience in the heavy wet stuff. The snow stopped and the sun came out right about noon and as of now (3pm) the main streets are clear and dry. Some of the side streets have a bit of snow left but that’s melting fast.

I mentioned that the weather yesterday morning was fair and pleasant and it was. I decided to go down to the RV storage lot and check the progress on the solar system upgrades I mentioned in my last post. They were just in process of finishing the last part of the job and everything looks great. I’ll report more on that at a later date.

The other reason for going to the RV lot was to replace some of the light bulbs in the trailer. I’ve got quite a few lights in this trailer and while that’s a good thing for being able to see, the light bulbs use a lot of power and put out a lot of heat. I’ve been investigating the possibility of replacing the incandescent and halogen bulbs with LED light sources. LED bulbs use very little power, produce almost no heat and last a very long time.

The picture to the right is one of the LEDs that I used. It goes in a recessed light fixture and produces almost the same amount of light as the halogen bulb that is currently in the fixture. It’s a simple swap out of bulbs so it’s an easy project.

I replaced four bulbs yesterday and if I’m happy with them I will replace all the rest of the bulbs both inside and outside the trailer with LEDs.

Thanks for visiting.

It's A Good Thing I Have An ARCTIC Fox

What a difference a day makes! I left the Tucson area Wednesday morning and drove north through Phoenix to Flagstaff. A couple of thousand feet in elevation and about a 25 degree drop in temperature. Tucson sits along the Mongollon Plateau (don't be a tourist...pronounce it mogeeyon) and is right at 7000 feet in elevation. The low in Tucson yesterday was about the high in Flagstaff. I went from a high of 77 degrees to a high of 48 degrees. I was prepared for cooler weather but not for the snow that is on the ground. It seems as if in late January Flagstaff got about four feet of snow and about half of it is still on the ground. Check out the picture above. Some of the piles of snow that have been plowed are 5-6 feet tall! Snow is everywhere. Doesn't the Arctic Fox look perfect in the setting?I guess it would be manageable if the weather would continue to warm but once again on this trip, my timing is less than perfect. It seems as if another storm it headed this way. Flagstaff will probably get a couple of inches of snow sometime in the next few days. The Grand Canyon is at about the same elevation as Flagstaff so I'm beginning to think that I'm pushing my luck to take The Bride there for two nights before going to Sedona. The weather forecast is for the snow level to be at 5-6 thousand feet and Sedona is at 5 thousand feet so any precipitation there will most likely be rain. I'm thinkin' that my best bet is to skip the Grand Canyon this trip and head straight to Sedona.

Well, it was Sunny today (Thursday) and I intended to make the best use of the day in exploring local attractions. On my list was Sunset Crater National Monument and Wupatki National Monument which are both just a little north of Flagstaff.

Sunset Crater is an extinct volcano that erupted somewhere between 1040 and 1100 AD. Many ancient people were living in the area at the time and you know it had to scare the hell out of them. Apparently though, the signs of impending eruption were pretty distinct and the evidence suggests that the ancient people mostly scrammed before the eruption itself.

The land for miles and miles is distinctly volcanic with hills of black pumice, areas of lava flows and just an "other worldly" look. Even after one thousand years, vegetation struggles to gain a foothold in the black pumice soil but it does cling to fertile areas. The ancient ones returned to the area after the eruptions and farmed areas that were fertile...which is where the Wupatki National Monument comes in. In the area northeast of Sunset Crater, numerous ruins of Pueblo people have been discovered. Unlike the vast buildings of Chaco Canyon, the people here lived in smaller pueblos of from a few dozen to a few hundred people. They eked out a living through subsistence farming and that farming was done without the benefit of irrigation. Dry farming is what they did. Plant a whole bunch of small fields all over the place and hopefully one or two of them would get enough rain to produce.

I spent most of the day driving through and walking around some of these ruins. While Sunset Crater is at the same elevation as Flagstaff...and with the same amount of snow, the ruins in Wupatki are about 2000 feet lower...no snow and 15-20 degrees warmer. One of the benefits of the less than ideal weather was that there were almost no other tourists around. Most of the time, while inspecting the ruins, there was not another soul for miles around. Total silence. It was cool!

Tomorrow at noon I pick up The Bride and we will celebrate a late Valentines Day....somewhere...most likely in Sedona, so stay tuned.

Thanks for visiting.

Not Feeling Like A Motherless Child Anymore!

My new Arctic Fox fifth wheel was delivered to the dealer in Colorado Springs on Friday so first thing yesterday morning I drove down there to look at it. Due to the Christmas holidays I won’t be able to actually take possession of it until the 29th. The outside has not been cleaned up yet from it’s trip from Oregon and it shows. Apparently it went through a pretty good snow storm in Wyoming and it looks pretty grungy but the dealer promised it would look perfect when I come to pick it up. The dealer has started his inspection and prep and during the initial inspection found that the kitchen faucet had a small leak. He was unable to fix it so he has ordered a new faucet from the factory.

One of the reasons I drove down there yesterday was to give the dealer the “capture plate” that must be installed on the pin box of the trailer before I can tow it with my SuperGlide hitch. After talking with the dealer for a while I spent about a half hour just sitting inside the trailer dreaming of the trips I will begin to take in it starting in February. I have managed to keep my enthusiasm in check up till now but now that it’s actually here I am “overflowing”!

I brought all of the manuals for the different appliances and features of the trailer home with me so my task today is to go through them and read them.

I spoke with The Bride this morning. They didn’t get as much snow and ice as was predicted but it’s still pretty dicey there. While we were talking I checked online for her flights….she flies from Greensboro, NC to Washington Dulles, to Denver. Both flights are still showing on-time but Washington Dulles is starting to report short delays. She will lay over in Washington Dulles for about four hours and leave there around 8pm so hopefully things will have cleared up by then.

Thanks for visiting.

Comin’ Atcha!

Well the storm system moved out of here this morning but it left bitter cold. The picture above was taken at 7:38 am. Don’t freak, it doesn’t say –95, it’s –9point5 but that still plenty cold. The high got all the way up to +20 but it didn’t stay there for long and it’s now back to single digits.

The storm is now headed east and in watching the news, it looks like readers to the east of me are now getting the worst of it.

Yesterday, in the midst of the cold and snow I had my truck tonneau cover installed. It looks great and will be perfect for what I want it to do. I’ll post a picture later.  All I need to do now is get the snow out of the bed of the truck. That will take a day or so as the temperatures are not supposed to get above freezing until tomorrow.  I also called the RV dealer to check on the status of my fifth wheel. They said it rolled off the line early this week and is scheduled to be delivered next week. The dealer will take a day or so to do his thing and hopefully by the end of the week I’ll pick it up. If the weather cooperates I’ll probably spend the night at Cheyenne Mountain State Park the day I pick it up to try out all the systems before I drag the rig back to the Denver area. That park is only 8-10 miles from the dealership.

Meanwhile, The Bride is scheduled to fly out of here on the 15th to visit her Mom, Ladder Lady, in North Carolina. She will return on Sunday the 20th.

I took this picture this afternoon. If you look close you can see my reflection in the Christmas tree ornament…

Thanks for visiting.

It Must Have Been An “Arctic” Front

Yesterday morning it began to snow. A wet, early season snow. The temps were so close to freezing in the morning that some of the precipitation was more like white rain. As the day progressed it got colder and by late afternoon we had about two inches of snow on the ground. By the time the system blew out of the area early this morning we had gotten about four inches of snow.

There’s something about the first snow of the season. It seems non threatening, and because it’s been so long (going on 5 months now) since the last snow, it’s a novelty and something to be enjoyed. With that in mind, yesterday morning, I headed for the local State Park hoping to stumble on some good photo opportunities.

My premise was good but my timing was not so good as the clouds and snow kept the visibility down to a minimum. Add to that, the very slushy conditions and I didn’t spend a whole lot of time seeking the perfect pic. It was pretty though, and I was the only one in the park besides the rangers….and they were hunkered down in their office.

Back at home in the afternoon, I commenced studying other “Arctic” things…..stay with me here, there’s a point….the quotation marks are there for a purpose.

I have been chronicling my search for a fifth wheel trailer on this blog since the beginning of September. I’ve spent a lot of time, and mileage, searching for that one fifth wheel that was perfect for The Bride and I. It’s a difficult task because The Bride and I both have different expectations and wish lists. In the last few days I have almost bought three different trailers, only to reconsider and change my mind.

One of the brands on the list was Arctic Fox…..get it now? Yesterday was a perfect time to review all of the pluses and minuses of this particular trailer. By the time I was done reviewing I had decided that this was the trailer for me. This morning I called and placed an order for my new Arctic Fox 27-5L fifth wheel trailer.

This unit is really head and shoulders above the rest of the trailers I was looking at. That was one of my problems. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted something that much better that the rest of my candidates because  you do pay for “better”. After thinking about it for the day however I know I made the right decision and I am “pumped”.

This trailer is a true four season trailer. It has superior insulation, thermo pane windows and even an electric blanket that is wrapped around the water and waste tanks to keep them from freezing in cold weather. It is also solidly built and weights a bit more than the other units I was considering.

It is not as long, and consequently doesn’t have as much living space inside as some of the other units I was considering but the other longer units wouldn’t have worked at most of the Forest Service gigs I did this summer….Life is a trade-off.

The bad news is that because I had a specific list of things I wanted with it, I couldn’t find one already built that way so I have to order it from the factory. The build date is scheduled for the second week in December and I expect it will be mid January before it is delivered to the dealer in Colorado Springs.

Tomorrow I drive down to Colorado Springs and give the dealer a deposit to make things official….I won’t be a motherless child for too much longer!

Thanks for visiting.